ArchiveJanuary 2013

By: Metro Canada Published on Thu Jan 31 2013 Well, she did it. A few months back, I wrote that it was time Ontario had an urban premier . A premier who understood Toronto. Someone who was unafraid to admit that, hey, according to the stats, Toronto is a huge part of Ontario's economy and social fabric — a part that can't be ignored, downplayed or removed. We got that on Saturday...

By: Metro Canada Published on Fri Jan 25 2013 And for those of us most concerned with the long-term direction and health of Toronto, that might actually be good news. Call me naive, but I've always hoped that Toronto's weird, destructive fascination with Rob Ford would wrap up with a clear decision at the ballot box. A fair campaign to beat Ford in 2014 has the potential to heal some of...

By: Matt Elliott Metro, Metro Canada Published on Wed Jan 23 2013 It's the chart that's supposed to make all this Mayor Rob Ford wackiness worth it. But here's the problem: it doesn't really prove anything. The chart Ford's supporters like to point to looks something like this, showing the size of Toronto's gross operating budget since the former municipalities of...

By: Metro Canada Published on Fri Jan 18 2013 Mayor Rob Ford's 2013 budget for the City of Toronto passed this week, with more bumps along the way than most people expected. Though his administration did a much better job attempting to find common ground for compromise with councillors, Ford still came out of the process with a string of lost votes that saw about $12 million put back into...

By: Metro Canada Published on Wed Jan 16 2013 The first thing you have to understand about the Ford administration's 2013 budget for the City of Toronto is that Mayor Rob Ford voted against it. That sounds weird, I know. It doesn't make much sense that the mayor would vote against a budget he had endorsed as one of the greatest municipal budgets in Toronto's history — a budget...

By: Metro Canada Published on Fri Jan 11 2013 As much as I appreciate that Mayor Rob Ford finally showed up to make some substantive comments on a city budgeting process that began three months ago, I'm going to have to ask for clarification. In a speech he gave yesterday to his Executive Committee, Ford claimed that his prudent budgeting measures have helped Toronto avoid fiscal ruin...